What Passes for Scholarship These Days by William H. Sousa, City Journal August 25, 2015
A response to Broken Windows critic Bernard Harcourt
For the better part of two decades, Columbia University law professor Bernard Harcourt has been on a personal crusade against Broken Windows policing, criticizing both its theoretical underpinnings and its policy applications. A close look at Harcourt’s work, however, reveals not only the weaknesses of his arguments but also his lack of attention to other research findings that conflict with his own. His portrayal of Broken Windows policing, it turns out, is fundamentally inaccurate and incomplete. In effect, Harcourt creates and then fights a paper tiger.
By way of background, Broken Windows is a policing tactic that emphasizes the police management of minor offenses. The authors of the Broken Windows hypothesis—George L. Kelling and the late James Q. Wilson—always maintained that Broken Windows policing should encourage proper discretion on the part of officers. Kelling in particular has discussed the importance of discretion when it comes to maintaining order, as in a recent article in Politico, where he indicates that arrest should be the last option when managing minor offenses.
Recent events in American cities have led Broken Windows critics to suggest an unfortunate link between the tactic and high arrest rates. In the Huffington Post, Harcourt rejects Kelling’s claim that Broken Windows was never meant to be a high-arrest strategy. As evidence, Harcourt cites a research report on NYPD policing written in 2001, in which Kelling and I use misdemeanor arrests as a proxy variable for disorder management. For Harcourt, our use of this variable is undeniable proof that Kelling calls for a high number of arrests as part of a Broken Windows policing strategy.
What Harcourt fails to mention, however, is that we use misdemeanor arrests for the specific purpose of that report’s quantitative analyses. ...
-go to links-
By way of background, Broken Windows is a policing tactic that emphasizes the police management of minor offenses. The authors of the Broken Windows hypothesis—George L. Kelling and the late James Q. Wilson—always maintained that Broken Windows policing should encourage proper discretion on the part of officers. Kelling in particular has discussed the importance of discretion when it comes to maintaining order, as in a recent article in Politico, where he indicates that arrest should be the last option when managing minor offenses.
Recent events in American cities have led Broken Windows critics to suggest an unfortunate link between the tactic and high arrest rates. In the Huffington Post, Harcourt rejects Kelling’s claim that Broken Windows was never meant to be a high-arrest strategy. As evidence, Harcourt cites a research report on NYPD policing written in 2001, in which Kelling and I use misdemeanor arrests as a proxy variable for disorder management. For Harcourt, our use of this variable is undeniable proof that Kelling calls for a high number of arrests as part of a Broken Windows policing strategy.
What Harcourt fails to mention, however, is that we use misdemeanor arrests for the specific purpose of that report’s quantitative analyses. ...
-go to links-
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